Ditto Explores the Massive Sultan’s Palace!! First Report…
So your friendly neighborhood Orange Monster was fortunate enough to get a preview of the AMAZING new ‘Massive Sultan’s Palace’ and other items from the new wizard 101 ‘Mega Bundle’ game card that’s coming to stores s0on!
The bundle comes with not only the Sultan’s Palace, but also the new Flying Carpet Mount, a ‘Snake in a Basket’ pet, some amazing Sultan’s Robes, a random mini-game kiosk, and even more – I don’t have time for a full complete breakdown right this instant, but you WILL be getting a video tour of the place soon! In the meantime, here are some pictures I snapped of the Sultan’s Palace as I was doing my initial exploration. My initial thoughts are that the place is massive, it is absolutely beautiful, and is full of fun hidden secrets, like the hidden treasure room that contains a gold lamp with a real genie!! Of course there is a standard PvP ring, plus tons of room to garden an of course room for all your pets and mounts to roam free!
As I said, I’ll do a lot more on this soon, and I’m sure other websites will have stories up too, but I wanted to get some initial pictures and impressions out, because it is amazing!!
New Video – Ditto’s Return to Crab Alley – Part 2
On this leg of the journey, Ditto must defeat Riverclaw Guards, which look a lot like Lovecraftian Deep Ones, so he can find the key to the White Tower and talk to Thomas Cromshell about the problems in Crab Alley
Ditto returns to Crab Alley – part 1
Ditto gets a summons to the Wizard City storm mill. It seems strange things are afoot at the Circle K… Ditto and Madame Jasmine investigate…
Ditto and more PvP
I do love PvP lately, and I’ve had a few requests for videos of me doing PvP, so here’s a fun one. This is me against another pyromancer, and I didn’t have any fire prisms in my deck (oversight on my part) – it was a great challenge! Did I win? You’ll have to watch to see!!
Fiery Boom Shrooms – my new favorite plant!
Harvesting Fiery Boom Shrooms
So I’m back to gardening, rank 8, and I’m finally harvesting Firey boom shrooms! I love these plants – they’re adorable and they give some pretty amazing treasure cards. I’m regularly harvesting Earthquake, Tempest, and Firezilla, which are handy to have in a duel AND seem to sell pretty well in the bazaar as well if you catch it right.
The only downside to these shrooms are the pests they attract – I’ve had imps twice, I hated having to drop 25,000 gold to buy that fly swatter spell, and it drains half my energy to cast it, but other than that these things don’t take much care. A little magic, a little water, and they’re happy little exploding mushrooms.
So in other news I’ve got some new videos coming soon and, of course, tomorrow is another hilarious (OK, maybe not hilarious) set of jokes from Carl the camera-bear! Hope you enjoy!
Keep playing safe and I’ll see you in the spiral!
Ditto
Ditto faces ‘The Crystal of Battle’
Still adventuring deep in Dragonspyre, Ditto needs to face the challenge of ‘the Crystal of Battle’, dueling a 4500 health Life boss (with the name ‘FireWinter’, so she sounds like a fire boss, very tricky’…)
It’s a good fight and goes pretty well for me overall… I’ve been playing around with enchanting my Helephant spells with ‘Monstrous’, adding a lot more damage to my attacks – I hit for 3381 in this fight, not too bad!
Ditto versus General Greystone…
Once again deep in the heart of Dragonspyre, I need to defeat ‘General Greystone’ and his Irate Banshee minion. Wonder what makes her so irate? Maybe it’s just a Dragonspyre thing…
The duel went well overall – I took out the Irate Banshee first, with a ‘monstrous’ buffed Helephant, and then focused on the General himself. For the general my winning hit was 4201 damage – not bad!
With the higher health levels in Dragonspyre I find that I’m not using Meteor Strike much at all, mostly using helephants and damage buffs against my opponents.
I do want to try to find an ice trap spell, then I can cast ice trap, fire prism, fire trap and increase damage even more.
The Tale of Tomar and Kimerith, a Happy Reunion
The grand finale of the tale of Tomar the dragonrider and his old friend Kimerith. After a bit of a blooper (Ditto did not pay attention to the quest details, oops…) Kimerith the Dragon is reunited with his old crazy shut-in friend Tomar. It’s really a touching scene… I feel all happy now 🙂
The Tale of Tomar and Kimerith – When it Reigns it Pours
I’m still happily helping Tomar and his dragon friend Kimerith in Dragonspyre. Kimerith wants his old reigns, I guess for old time’s sake, but of course, they have been taken by a nasty bad guy and furry little Ditto has to lend a hand.
Am I the only person disappointed by ‘The Hoarder’? I was hoping for a tower full of piles of junk, old broken wands, and stacks of old books from wall to wall, maybe a bunch of small dragons hiding in the corners or sleeping on top of stacks of stuff? A simple landscape boss was a little underwhelming – though a great fight…
A rare find! A happy quest in Dragonspyre!!
That’s right, I have come across the rarest of finds, a happy, feel-good quest in Dragonspyre! I assume the designer was on loan from the Mooshu team while this quest was written.
The story of the great dragon rider Tomar and his faithful companion Kimerith Windhammer is a nice, friendly story of long lost friends re-united, interrupted by only one giant terrifying boss battle. It’s a nice story and I felt like it would be nice to share.
Here are the first two videos, where I meet Tomar and Kimerith, as well as do a little Dragonspyre sightseeing…
Introducing Destiny Hexcrafter!
So I was on Twitter, minding everyone elses’ business (Isn’t that the business model for Twitter?) when I saw an interesting post from Isaac Mistheart about running a ‘no armor’ character. I asked about it, and it turns out he and The Friendly Necromancer have been playing characters that use nothing but starter robes, starter wand, and starter deck to play Wizard 101. Apparently Friendly is already in Mooshu with his character!
This idea fascinated me – I feel like it puts a completely new perspective on the game, and I wanted to join in, so I am officially introducing miss Destiny Hexcrafter – sister of my main character Digby Hexcrafter. She’s Death school, and will play the game entirely with starter robes, wand, and spellbook.
Introducing - Destiny Hexcrafter!
I don’t want to confuse people with this character versus my main character, who is nearing level 48 now, so I believe I’m going to do this as a weekly ‘update’ blog with screenshots, but no video. It will be tagged as a different category, too, just called ‘Destiny’. I’ll let everyone know how she’s doing and what challenges I’m seeing. I dont’ expect much difference in the early levels, because I know I didn’t really start looking at equipment with Digby until around level 10, I think.
Anyway – say hi to Destiny and wish me luck!!
Ditto Versus Ivan Soulsinger!
Deep in the heart of Dragonspyre, I have to go in and face Ivan Soulsinger, a very naughty wizard who has trapped a bunch of Drakes….
It was a pretty standard fight, Ivan had over 4000 health (the bosses are getting tougher and tougher out here) – I took out the fire minion first, then just blasted Ivan as much as I could and finally took him out. I needed a few pixies to keep my health up and finally took my own advice and didn’t get too risky with the ‘just one more hit’ mentality, healing before I desperately needed it (I always lose when I wait too long…)
Ditto faces Avalanche!
Deep within Dragonspyre, Ditto must face the boss Avalanche, for some reason that I can’t really remember now. The battle went really well, textbook Pyromancer action taking out both the boss and his minion, though it got a little dicey towards the end. There was a minor Phillip attack in the middle of the duel, but I was still unscathed…
Ditto’s Video Bloggy Thingy – April 12, 2011
This week, I get to the bottom of ‘Mount-A-Palooza’ and talk about my current in-game status for Wizard 101, plus test realm and other general stuff. I’ve got some cool news coming very soon, but it wasn’t quite ready for announcing today, sorry. Well, I guess I do give a hint – I will be doing videos of a new game soon, but there’s something else too, so stay tuned!!
Roaming mounts and the best mounts sale ever!!!
Fresh off the presses from Wizard101, between April 8th and April 17th, 2011, ALL permanent mounts are on sale for up to 50% off their regular prices!! AND they’ve apparently added NEW mounts and brought back some retired old favorites!
And that’s not all – this is in preparation for ROAMING MOUNTS!! I’m yelling that because I think it’s just that cool – now my ancient Koi and my lobster can swim/float around, and I might buy myself a sea turtle and a ray just to round out the aquatic theme!
All the details are here: https://www.wizard101.com/game/promotions/mount-a-palooza which also links to the official ‘Roaming Mounts’ video from KingsIsle – hopefully they won’t mind me posting it here too, because it’s great!
And the winners are…
Well the contest is over and it was better than I could have imagined!! Me got so many entries – me was not expecting that, let me tell you!! No way! But Miss Narrator and I read every single one, yes we did!
The first thing I’ll say is that there were so many awesome and really smart online safety tips, Ditto was very happy with how safe you all are!! By far the most popular tip was one of the most important – don’t share your personal information, like name, age, address, or phone number! It sounds like everybody has that rule memorized, and that’s good, because it’s so important! There were a lot of people who said to make sure your virus and spyware protection software was up to date as well, which is also very important as a safety tip, I hope everyone is doing that! I know I am! (more…)
And the Snappy Lobster contest is OVER!!
Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who entered!! We’ve got all the entries now and we’ll be notifying the official winners some time on Thursday, April 7th (which is probably today…) so stay tuned!!
Play Safe!!
Ditto
Ditto’s Weekly Video Bloggy Thingy 4/5/2011
Hi everybody! Here’s my video bloggy thingy for this week, yay! I talk about my weekly twitter report, April fools, and of course CONTESTS!!
And speaking of contests, here is the link to the official list of participating fan sites, so make sure you’re visiting all of them and entering for your chance to win a great mount this week!!
More school shopping..
I’m still in Dragonspyre, battling these awful Terrorwing Warlocks to get my school books. This is a good duel, shows what a Pyromancer can really do…
And can I just say, battling anything called a ‘Terrorwing’ to get your school books is certainly not the way to encourage the best and the brightest to attend your school. I wonder if Dragonspyre Academy is anything like Durmstrang?
And I thought buying textbooks in college was bad!
So I have a new task to get into Dragonspyre academy, in order to make my way to Malistaire. Well, one of things I need to do to become a student of Dragonspyre is to get my textbooks, and since the academy bookstore seems to have been blown up like the library at Sunnydale High (probably under similar circumstances), I need to collect my textbooks from Terrorwing Warlocks! And not all of them HAVE textbooks, so I’ve got a lot of dueling to do before I can begin my studies!
To be honest, even though it’s a pain I think I prefer this method of getting textbooks to actually paying for them at the college bookstore! $125 for an English textbook? But I already SPEAK English!!
Ditto’s New Threads…
So one of the great benefits of getting to level 45 recently is that Level 45 opens up a whole new tier of equipment. Having a decent amount of gold in my possession, I took Digby Hexcrafter down to the Bazaar and did a little shopping. I’m sure I didn’t get the very BEST gear out there, but I made some pretty dramatic improvements overall, especially since there were a few things I hadn’t updated since level 30, I think….
So here is my new equipment – I’m really happy with it!
Digby Hexcrafter has a whole new look!
I stitched my old shroud (which I still love) to a new ‘Gurtok Fireshroud’, giving me +200 Heatlh, +3% Fire Accuracy, +8% Fire Damage.
The very cool looking ‘Chronius’ Cloak of the Inferno’ – +200 health, +4% fire accuracy, +9% fire damage.
General Firetusk’s Flameboots – +100 max heatlh, +3% fire accurracy, +7% fire damage.
My new favorite staff – ‘Blackrock’s Obsidian Blade’ – Give 1 power pip and 5 cards, the 95 damage ‘Major Fire Scorch’ – and it looks so cool!
My new Athame, the ‘Claw of Conciliation’ – +110 mana and +10% power pip chance.
I found ‘Kraysys’ ring of Betrayal’, which give me +176 health and +15% chance for power pips. Not bad!
Finally, and with much glee, I found one ‘Snowcrusher’s Flame Pendant’ which grants a Helephant card – always handy to have a Helephant up your sleeve!
So there you have it – +33% fire damage, +10% fire accuracy, 61% Chance for power pips, +778 health and +110 mana, not to mention a Helephant card, from my current equipment. Makes me a happy Ditto!
Ditto’s week and the hardest duel ever! (so far…)
Wow, what a week it has been for this furry orange monster. PAX East, interviewing Fred Howard from KingsIsle, guest hosting Ravenwood Radio, getting my stories posted or linked on Beckett MOG and MMO Crunch and who knows where else… It really all comes down to having the BEST community of any game out there, and having amazing and supportive fans and followers! I couldn’t do any of this without all of you! Well, I COULD do this without you, sure, but what would be the point really? It would kind of be like talking to myself, wouldn’t it? And there’s nothing sadder than a furry orange monster just sitting there talking to himself… oh wait, where was I?
Oh yes – back to Wizard 101, since I’ve had a few spare minutes this week to jump back in. Inspired by all the pet talk this week, I’ve started training Madame Jasmine again and got her to Ancient, I’ll keep working with her until she’s all the way to ‘super old’ or whatever they call it…. I’ve also been working my way through DragonSpyre – this place is pretty terrifying! It seems like every other fight is a boss fight or else you’ve got to get through a tower with like seventy levels of elite battles to get to your end goal, which is usually just reading a book, and sometimes eating pudding. It’s very exciting though! Well, maybe not the pudding, but all the other stuff is really exciting!
And speaking of exciting – I’m working my way through the Plaza of Conquests now and had to go talk to Mavra Flamewing for ‘shield training’. I’m not sure where she got her teaching degree, but I was under the impression that saying ‘Here’s a storm shark, good luck with it’ wasn’t really ‘teaching’… This turned out to be the most difficult fight of the game, I think!
Mavra and her shiled-tossing minions!
For anyone who hasn’t gotten to DragonSpyre or hasn’t made it to this quest, Mavra is a storm boss with 2000 health – certainly not huge, I’ve taken out bigger and meaner. The trick is that she has two ‘minions’ with her, which are these little ‘protective pox’ critters that do nothing but throw out every shield imaginable. Elemental shields, absorbs, tower shields, you name it, they shield themselves – and Mavra – with them. Sure it’s nice that they don’t hit you with damage, but putting up to three shields up (one from each pox AND Mavra, and yes they CAN all land on the same target, I’ve seen it done) every turn makes dealing damage VERY tricky!
Fortunately, as a pyromnacer I can specialize in damage over time, which it seems to me is the only way to beat this foe, at least solo. I got rid of helephants and even my beloved meteor strikes and loaded up with link, scald, even fire elf and heck hounds, as well as every shield I could personally carry, then maxed out healing spells and dove into the duel.
The duel took a long time – I’d say 20 minutes? Wasn’t paying that close attention but it was around there. I would toss up a shield and then hit with a DOT spell, trying to stack as many DOT as I could. Scald was really nice because it hit all enemies, so I was slowly working the pox’s down as I was focused on Mavra. Oh yes unlike most boss fights where you try to take out the minion first, because it’s quicker, for this fight I recommend going after Mavra 100% until she’s down, because once she’s down the Pox minions can’t hurt you, so you’ve bacially got as long as you need (or have cards) to take care of them, and without Mavra raining damage down on your head every other turn, it’s much less stressful!
In the end, it was a double stacked ‘scald’ that won the day and got me my victory dance. I kind of wish I have taken video of this fight, but honestly it would have been twenty minutes of me whining about yet ANOTHER shield going up and ruining my winning shot….
I beat Mavra and her annoying shield minions
So that’s about it for this week – not that I could have handled any more!! Next week things ‘should’ be back to normal, in theory – I’m actually kind of looking forward to that. For now, I will content myself to sneaking a cupcake while Miss Narrator isn’t looking…
See you in the Spiral, keep playing safe!!
PLOX
Ditto has KingsIsle’s Big Announcement – WINTERTUSK!!
That’s right, the excitement from PAX East wasn’t just my initial interview with Fred Howard! After that interview was over, Fred said that the next part of the filming could not be shown until the official press announcement on March 15th – it was TOP SECRET! He was telling ME secrets about Wizard 101!! Talk about PRESSURE! And what was the top secret thing he had to reveal?
Wintertusk!!
The next world coming to Wizard 101 is called Wintertusk, and it will complete the epic storyline that began with Grizzleheim. Yes, Fred does call it Jotungaard a few times in the interview – I guess he was more nervous than he seemed – but I did confirm that the world is called Wintertusk and that Jotungaard is an important area in the Wintertusk mountains! That’s right, mountains!! How cool is that?
The Wintertusk update will offer new things to do, and areas to explore, for powerful high-level Wizards as well as lower-level students just beginning their adventures, which is always a nice thing!
According to Fred, some of the things that wizards will have to look forward to with the Wintertusk update include:
- Brand new areas for high-level Wizards to discover and explore.
- New spells! I’ll say that again – New Spells!!! Woohoo!!
- Level 58 class pets for each primary school – Yay pets!!
- A revamped underwater introduction zone for lower level characters that’s going to continue the story of the Crab King from the Selena Gomez/Crab Alley quest line. That’s great because that was a fun quest line!! I love the underwater areas!
- Lots of additional surprises – Fred said they were saving some of the best details to reveal later, but the info we have now is a GREAT teaser – I’m already really excited!!
In addition to the video interview, KingsIsle gave me a great picture of one of the lead characters in the Wintertusk storyline, Grandmother Raven. She looks so nice – I’ll bet she loves to bake cookies, what do you think??
Grandmother Raven, a lead character in the Wintertusk story!
That’s all the information I have right now, and it was made very clear to me that there is no release date or tentative release date or anything even resembling a date related to this. They keep the developers locked in a room with no access to calendars, and even the fruity dates that grow on trees are off limits to them, so please don’t ask! KingsIsle will let us all know as soon as they’re ready to, and I for one cannot WAIT!!!
I do want to say another deep thank you to Fred Howard and everyone at KingsIsle who made this furry orange monster’s PAX East experience one he will NEVER forget!
More fan art!! I love fan art!
So I opened my email this morning and was greeted by the most wonderful picture from Patrick Hawktamer, who did a great scene of me in Mooshu – he even did my blue eyebrows! And even better, he knew not to send me any personal information like his phone number or address, which is great!
So THANK YOU Patrick Hawktamer, you made my day!
Ditto in Mooshu - Fan Art by Patrick Hawktamer
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 